Twenty years ago Tuesday, baseball came to a screeching halt and didn't return for 232 days. The strike canceled the rest of the 1994 season, and for the first time since 1904, even the World Series.

It forever changed the course of history.

"I never felt the same way about baseball again after that,'' Dave Stewart, a four-time 20-game winner and then pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays, tells USA TODAY Sports. "Even today, after all of my years in baseball, the passion I have for the game has never been the same. All because of that strike.

"It was one of the most embarrassing moments that's ever happened to Major League Baseball. I wish I had never come back.''

Stewart stayed around for another three months once baseball returned in April 1995, back with the team for which he had his best years, the Oakland Athletics. He then retired after 19 seasons, before becoming an assistant general manager, a pitching coach and now an agent.

Yet for so many others, from Hall of Famer Goose Gossage to Bo Jackson to Sid Bream to Lloyd McClendon, they never would play another major league game.

"I never did announce my retirement. Even today, 20 years later, I still haven't announced my retirement.

"You don't leave the game. The game leaves you.''

Gossage and former pitcher Charlie Hough are the only two players in baseball history who endured all eight work stoppages, while many of today's greatest stars, such as New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, never have lived through one.

"Most of these guys in the big leagues today,'' Gossage says, "they don't have any freakin' clue on how they're being paid all of this money. Not one clue. They have no idea the blood, sweat and tears we went through.''

Gossage's Hall of Fame career began with a strike as a rookie in 1972 with the Chicago White Sox and ended with the 1994 strike with the Seattle Mariners, with six work stoppages in between.

"They were all ugly,'' Gossage says. "The owners always tried to stick it to us, but we weren't going to let them break that union. We didn't have the money like the guys today. When I made the White Sox as a rookie, I was literally broke.

"I remember getting to Chicago, opening day was the next day, and we went on strike. I was just a kid. I didn't have a credit card. I had no place to stay. No money for a hotel room. I remember going to Joe Pepitone's bar. He bought me some beers, and I wandered the street all night.

"That's what it was like back in those days.''

By the time 1995 rolled around, the strike gave players an option most never had considered.

"Once I got introduced to the thing they call Labor Day, and had a family barbecue and everything, I said, 'Hell with it, I'm not going back.'

"I had pretty much done everything in baseball," says Henderson, who ended his career with the Kansas City Royals. "I didn't have anything left to prove. It was my fifth strike or lockout, and I was pretty much done, but I was proud what we were able to accomplish.

"Guys like me and Rickey (Henderson), we paved the way for all of these big salaries and the money they're' making today. If we hadn't gone through all that and the union had been broken, we would have been like football.''

Tom Brunansky, who helped lead the Minnesota Twins to the 1987 World Series title with 32 homers, also planned to play one more season after 1994 and return to the Red Sox, thinking they had the team to finally end their World Series drought. The longer the strike dragged out, and the more he hung around his three young kids, he told his agent he was done.

"We were playing our last game against the Orioles in Baltimore,'' Brunansky says. "And I remember walking up to the plate, and thinking, 'This could be my last at-bat ever. I'm going to go up there and try to hit a home run.' I ended up walking.

"It's weird, of all of the walks I ever had in my career (770), that's the only one I remember.''

While free agents worked out at local high schools during the offseason, and others headed to Homestead, Fla., there was Jordan, who had retired from the Chicago Bulls in 1993 after nine seasons and three NBA titles.

Jordan began playing baseball in 1994 for the White Sox, also owned by Bulls' owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Jordan spent the season at Class AA Birmingham (Ala.), hitting just .202 with three homers and 51 RBI. He refused to give up, played in the Arizona Fall League and vowed to return to the White Sox's spring training camp in 1995.

Yet with the strike still going on, Jordan refused to cross the picket line and play with the replacement players. He sat out and then announced in March he was returning to the NBA, winning three more titles with the Bulls, but giving up his dream of playing in the major leagues.

"I think he would have definitely given it one more year if not for the strike,'' Reinsdorf told USA TODAY Sports. "When the strike hit and we decided to go with replacement players, Michael could not be part of that.''

We will never know whether Gwynn could have hit .400. He ended his season with a .394 batting average, the highest of any player since Ted Williams in 1941.

We'll never know if Matt Williams, who had 43 homers and was on pace for 61, could have been the first to break Roger Maris' home-run record, squashing the great juiced homer race of '98 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

We know the Montreal Expos had the best record in baseball (74-40) and wonder if the Expos had won the World Series, would there still be a franchise in Montreal today, instead of relocating to Washington, D.C.?

"It makes you kind of sick to think about everything that could have been,'' says Gossage, who pitched three scoreless innings and was the winning pitcher his final game. "It wasn't that I wanted to go out on my own terms. I'd rather make an ass of myself try to play another year or two than ever leave the game early.

"I wanted keep playing this game until they tore my uniform off. The strike tore it off for me.''

Now, after eight work stoppages in a 22-year span, baseball has had 20 consecutive years of labor peace.

"It would have been a damn shame if baseball didn't learn from that,'' Gossage says. "Hopefully, no one ever again has to experience what we went through.